Quotes
Quotes about Man
Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.
With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvellous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?
The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another.
All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.
It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line.
No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.
The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice.
Themistocles said to Antiphales, "Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson."
Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."
Themistocles said that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can be shown only by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.
When he was in great prosperity, and courted by many, seeing himself splendidly served at his table, he turned to his children and said: "Children, we had been undone, if we had not been undone."
To conduct great matters and never commit a fault is above the force of human nature.
Menenius Agrippa concluded at length with the celebrated fable: "It once happened that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labour to supply and minister to its appetites."
A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?" holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. "Yet," added he, "none of you can tell where it pinches me."
The saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, "The enemy's ships are more than ours," replied, "For how many then wilt thou reckon me?"
He said that in his whole life he most repented of three things: one was that he had trusted a secret to a woman; another, that he went by water when he might have gone by land; the third, that he had remained one whole day without doing any business of moment.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
Agesilaus being invited once to hear a man who admirably imitated the nightingale, he declined, saying he had heard the nightingale itself.
For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome.
"And this," said Cæsar, "you know, young man, is more disagreeable for me to say than to do."
It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man you will learn to halt.
The whole life of man is but a point of time; let us enjoy it, therefore, while it lasts, and not spend it to no purpose.
One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.
Euripides was wont to say, "Silence is an answer to a wise man."
